How fast people type

The results of the study change our understanding of typing performance. Most of our knowledge of how people type is based on studies from the typewriter era. People presently make different types of mistakes: more errors where a letter is replaced by another one, whereas in the typewriter era they often added characters or omitted one.

Also, modern users use their hands differently. Anna Feit explains: "Modern keyboards allow typing keys with different fingers of the same hand with much less force than what was possible with typewriters.

This is partially explaining why self-taught typing techniques using less than ten fingers can be as fast as the touch typing system, which was probably not the case in the typewriter era. The large dataset allows to infer reliable statistics about the typing performance of modern computer users.

Average users in this study typed 52 words per minute, much less than the professionally trained typists studied in the 70's and 80's who typically reached words per minute. However, performance varied largely. Antti Oulasvirta. Users who took the typing test also provided their demographic information and answered questions about their typing experience. It was found that users who took a typing course in the past actually showed a very similar typing behavior as those who never took such a course, how fast they type, how they use their hands and the errors they make -- even though they use less fingers.

This is in line with previous research suggesting that users on the one hand develop their own efficient techniques and on the other forget the "pure" touch typing system. Analyzing the individual keypresses, the researchers found that users exhibit different typing styles, characterized by how they use their hands and fingers, the use of rollover, tapping speeds, and typing accuracy.

For example, they could classify some users as ''careless typists'' who move fingers quickly but have to correct many mistakes, and others as attentive error-free typists, who gain speed by moving hands and fingers in parallel, pressing the next key already before the first one is released. It is now possible for a computer to classify users' typing behavior simply based on the observed keystroke timings which does not require to store the text that users have typed.

Such information can be useful for example for spell checkers, or to create new personalised training programmes for typing. Anna Feit says: "You do not need to change to the touch typing system if you want to learn to type faster. And yeah, I have about 2. But can you use capital letters?

Perhaps Teresia R. Ostrach would consider some investigation into this. You might have gotten a… slight calculation error there. I type at 86 words per minute, however I am indeed the fastest in my seventh grade class. Just experience in typing, ability to spell words correctly, and sometimes a decent reaction time for when you blunder can help increase that speed to that of a jet. Were you rushing to type this? The math is correct.

This matches well with the results of typingtest. I also have a laptop whose keyboard requires much more force, in the g range, and I can barely get to WPM with that; same with the more conventional full-sized keyboards with very deep key travel and wide gaps between keys, where even sustaining WPM quickly gets tiring. I type about WPM proof. Sometimes, and this might sound weird, I feel in the zone and can type significantly faster — closer to WPM.

I attribute this to my piano background and a childhood playing video games. I do type faster when I am listening and make less error. That means it took you precisely 26 minutes, 9 seconds, and milliseconds to complete what you just typed. How much have stuff could you do in that much time?

The true average is closer to 40 WPM. Finally, consider the error rate. If my thinking gets bothered by anything, I immediatly start failing and I have to restart all over. I can play extremely fast if I have to play on the same octave but I still have to work on moving my hand precisely from one place to another on the piano. This blog was… how do you say it? Thanks a lot!

For those not competing in Guinness World Record challenges, the median typing speed is about words per minute and the median speaking speed is, again, three times that, about words per minute.

The ratio is […]. The key no pun intended to fast typing is to treat words as words and not as single letters, memorising the sequence of finger movements that make up the word so it comes out on the fingers like playing a chord. We also have to consider the fact that this post was made back in , so standards were probably lower back then. That being said, a WPM of is by no means physically impossible. I just took an online typing test for a job, and managed a WPM of 95, with an average of two corrected words per minute Not words with typos in them, words that I had gone back to and corrected before moving on.

As terrible as that may be, the data is clearly outdated and no longer relevant. I find it hard to believe some of the comments on this site. In the study above 0 in tested typists exceeded wpm while nearly 1 in 5 of the comments above claim to have topped that no problem. Really guys? Since then, my typing speed has consistently increased.

In 10 years, my typing speed increased to 82 wpm. She had been a secretary all her life. So not impossible…. World records are achievable but they are rare — that is why they are called World Records! I am a much more extreme case and had to throw in my 2 cents when I saw :. I currently do an average of about on most standard 2 minute test This equates to about 5 words a second sometimes, or the sme as a very fast rate of speech verbally.

I wish there were still a ton of job opportunities but there arent lol, closed captioning and medical transcription which ive heard is redundant makes sense. I can break over when it is slang and words that we use daily, and on real tough test I can go down to like s where the test is based around literature and is packed with punctuation. I am such an extreme case that when I was 10 years old my middle school would not allow me to take keyboarding, as someone else surely needed it more and I had to take other electives.

Still to this date have not met someone who can keep up, and I just added the winner of the USA typing championships to my facebook, as to hopefully one day meet my match :.

Why words per minute instead of chars per minute? Words varies in length so it does not make sense to me to use WPM as a unit for typing speed. In my opinion it should be CPM, chars per minute. Or am I missing something here? They do all calculations giving the a WORD the weight of 4 characters. The reason for this is most words are, and especially most transitives and such that we use regularly. They use characters per minute on the ten key, because they have to but since they talk about essays and such, novels by words or pages, going down to the character wouldnt be as effective for memory.

As a non-English native speaker, I get a problem as I live in Britain. Keyboard layouts are a pain. I do change the layout at the OS level but still, some keys are difficult to hit, especially the question mark, plus and minus and some punctuation. And I also developed CTS Carpal Tunnel Syndrome that slowed me down a lot — as well as making my hands feel numb every half hour or so.

That means something closer to once every FOUR words. I think for an ordinary blogger this is an handsome speed. This changes occasionally though as I frequently type from my thought. If I was given a challenge to type as many sensible sentences as possible within a minute, my speed could drastically change within a matter of seconds, say 95 to possibly wpm. Presently, my typing speed is a solid 71 wpm.

The thing is, I develop a sense of apprehension in my mind that prevents me from exceeding greater speeds. I tend to articulate the English language too excessively, Therefore, my competence of typing lowers tremendously. Test your speed and accuracy using our free typing test. Use your results to see how far a proper typing method could take you! The average typing speed is around 40 words per minute wpm. If you want to be very productive, you should aim for a typing speed of 65 to 70 words per minute.

To type faster, you need to learn how to position yourself correctly, use all your fingers, hit the right keys without looking and avoid making mistakes. Our method has helped millions of users achieve their goals. You will see improvement in a few weeks if you practice often, concentrate on accuracy over speed and adopt the proper technique.

The hardest part is forgetting your bad habits, even if it means typing more slowly at first. Test Your Typing Speed! Start the test! Are you connected to a physical keyboard?